1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to methods and systems for performing stress testing of equipment. The invention also relates to active and passive stress testing using modular design and robust data collection that is adaptable to a variety of equipment.
2. Description of Related Art
It is common to subject integrated circuits (IC) to various stresses to ensure reliability. Specifically, an IC is typically subjected to high temperatures for an extended period of time. This process is called “burn-in” testing in the art and identifies marginal devices likely to succumb to such stresses in the field.
Various systems and methods have been designed to perform bum-in testing of integrated circuits and computer components. Many of these conventional solutions focus on specific adapters and hardware that permit high-volume bum-in testing of specific equipment.
For example, Slocum (U.S. Pat. No. 6,097,201) discloses a system of stackable test boards in which a large number of integrated circuit boards may be mounted. Each of Slocum's test boards includes a contactor region that permits test signals to be routed to the individual integrated circuit boards. As such, Slocum's system is specifically designed to perform high-volume bum-in testing of specific components (integrated circuit boards).
Leung (U.S. Pat. No. 5,798,653) utilizes a special-purpose bum-in controller located within the bum-in oven to “exercise” an integrated circuit (IC) by toggling a high percentage of the switches within the IC.
Leung also illustrates the conventional thinking of bum-in testing which is to select a statistically significant sample of the product (IC's in this case) which are then subjected to bum-in testing. Like Slocum, Leung's system performs a dynamic test in which input stimuli are applied to the ICs to exercise or toggle the electrical circuit nodes of the IC.
Leung performs two types of dynamic bum-in testing on these sample IC's including an infant mortality bum-in and a longevity qualifying bum-in which mainly differ in the amount of time in which the IC's are subjected to the age-accelerating bum-in test. A simple data set is collected from these tests, which includes how many ICs succumb to infant mortality.
The flexibility of conventional stress testing systems is quite limited. Moreover, the number testing circuits matches the number of IC boards being tested thus requiring duplicative testing hardware. Moreover, the data collected by conventional system is quite rudimentary. Thus, there is a need in the art that solves these and other deficiencies in conventional stress-testing systems.